An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: Italian defense company Leonardo on Thursday unveiled plans for an AI-powered shield for cities and critical infrastructure, adding to Europe's push to ramp up sovereign defense capabilities amid rising geopolitical tensions. The system, dubbed the "Michelangelo Dome" in a nod to Israel's Iron Dome and U.S. President Donald Trump's plans for a "Golden Dome," will integrate multiple defense systems to detect and neutralize threats from sea to air including missile attacks and drone swarms... Leonardo's dome will be built on what CEO Roberto Cingolani called an "open architecture" system meaning it can operate alongside any country's defense systems... Leonardo's dome will be built on what CEO Roberto Cingolani called an "open architecture" system meaning it can operate alongside any country's defense systems.

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In his mid-20s, Lu Heng "got an idea that has made him a lot richer," writes the Wall Street Journal. He scooped up 10 million unused IP addresses, mostly form Africa, and then leases them to companies, mostly outside Africa, "that need them badly." [A]round half of internet traffic continues to use IPv4, because changing to IPv6 can be expensive and complex and many older devices still need IPv4. Companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Google still want IPv4 addresses because their cloud-hosting businesses need them as bridges between the IPv4 and IPv6 worlds... Africa, which has been slower to develop internet infrastructure than the rest of the world, is the only region that still has some of the older addresses to dole out... He searches for IPv4 addresses that aren't being used — by ISPs or anyone else that holds them — and uses his Hong Kong-based company, Larus, to lease them out to others. In 2013, Lu registered a new company in the Seychelles, an African archipelago in the Indian Ocean, to apply for IP addresses from Africa's internet registry, called the African Network Information Centre, or Afrinic. Between 2013 and 2016, Afrinic granted that company, Cloud Innovation, 6.2 million IPv4 addresses. That's more addresses than are assigned to Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. A single IPv4 address can be worth about $50 on its transfer to a company like Larus, which leases it onward for around 5% to 10% of that value annually. Larus and its affiliate companies, Lu said, control just over 10 million IPv4 addresses. The architects of the internet don't appear to have contemplated the possibility that anyone would seek to monetize IP addresses... Lu's activities triggered a showdown with Africa's internet registry. In 2020, after what it said was an internal review, Afrinic sent letters to Lu and others seeking to reclaim the IP addresses they held. In Lu's case, Afrinic said he shouldn't be using the addresses outside Africa. Lu responded that he wasn't violating rules in place when he got the addresses... After some back-and-forth, Lu sued Afrinic in Mauritius to keep his allocated addresses, eventually filing dozens of lawsuits... One of the lawsuits that Lu filed in Mauritius prompted a court there to freeze Afrinic's bank accounts in July 2021, effectively paralyzing the organization and eventually sending it into receivership. The receivership choked off distributions of new IPv4 addresses, leaving the continent's service providers struggling to expand capacity... In September, Afrinic elected a new board. Since then, some internet-service providers have been granted IPv4 addresses.

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The Free Software Foundation describes how "After months of preparation and excitement, we finally came together on November 21 for a global online hackathon to support free software projects and "put a spotlight on the difficult and often thankless work that free software hackers carry out..." Based on how many of you dropped in over the weekend and were incredibly engaged in the important work that is improving free software, either as a spectator or as a participant, this goal was accomplished. And it's all thanks to you! Friday started a little rocky with a datacenter outage affecting most FSF services. Participants spread out to work on six different free software projects over forty-eight hours as our tech team worked to restore all FSF sites with the help and support of the community. Over three hundred folks were tuned in at a time, some to participate in the hackathon and others to follow the progress being made. As a community, we got a lot done over the weekend... It was amazing to see so many of you take a little (or a lot of!) time out of your busy schedules to improve free software, and we're incredibly grateful for each and every one of you. It really energizes us and shows us how much we can accomplish when we work together over even just a couple days. Not only was this a fantastic sight to see because of the work we got done, but it was also a very fitting way to conclude our fortieth anniversary celebration events. Free software has been and always will be a community effort, one that continues to get better and better because of the dedicated developers, contributors, and users who ensure its existence. Thank you for celebrating forty years of the FSF and fighting for a freer future for us all.

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Almost two-thirds of registered U.S. voters "say that a four-year college degree isn't worth the cost," according to a new NBC News poll: Just 33% agree a four-year college degree is "worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime," while 63% agree more with the concept that it's "not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off." In 2017, U.S. adults surveyed were virtually split on the question — 49% said a degree was worth the cost and 47% said it wasn't. When CNBC asked the same question in 2013 as part of its All American Economic Survey, 53% said a degree was worth it and 40% said it was not. The eye-popping shift over the last 12 years comes against the backdrop of several major trends shaping the job market and the education world, from exploding college tuition prices to rapid changes in the modern economy — which seems once again poised for radical transformation alongside advances in AI... Remarkably, less than half of voters with college degrees see those degrees as worth the cost: 46% now, down from 63% in 2013... The upshot is that interest in technical, vocational and two-year degree programs has soared. "The 20-point decline over the last 12 years among those who say a degree is worth it — from 53% in 2013 to 33% now — is reflected across virtually every demographic group."

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"A year after launching a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi, Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide and partner Uber can finally call that service driverless," reports TechCrunch. A company official hailed it as "a historic transportation milestone, as the first driverless AV deployment outside of the U.S. or China." But TechCrunch notes that's just the beginning: Uber has spent the past two years locking up partnerships with 20 autonomous vehicle technology companies in various countries, including the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Those partnerships have expanded beyond the realm of robotaxis as well. Uber's deals span the full range of self-driving applications, including delivery and trucking. This year alone, it announced partnerships withAnn Arbor, Michigan-basedMay MobilityandVolkswagen, Chinese self-driving firms Momenta,Pony.ai, and Baidu, as well as a recent deal to create a premium robotaxi service using Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with a self-driving system from San Francisco-based startup Nuro. These deals are finally beginning to materialize into commercial services. For instance, Uber and Waymo launched a robotaxi service earlier this year in Austin. Now, Uber has expanded to the Middle East with WeRide in Abu Dhabi — with even more cities to come, including Dubai. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi forecast in the company's third-quarter earnings report that there would be autonomous vehicle deployments on the Uber network in at least 10 cities by the end of 2026. Uber and WeRide have previously shared plans to expand to 15 cities throughout the Middle East and Europe, eventually scaling to thousands of robotaxis. That would represent a massive leap for WeRide, which today has more than 150 robotaxis in the region.

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Digital Trends reports: A wave of shortages now threatens to ripple across RAM, SSDs, and even hard drives, affecting not only performance-hungry rigs but also everyday systems. — CyberPowerPC has publicly confirmed it will raise prices on all systems starting December 7th due to RAM costs spiking by 500% and SSD prices doubling since October. — Memory suppliers warn of a global DRAM and SSD shortage running into late 2026 or even 2027, driven heavily by AI server demand. — As reported by Bloomberg, Lenovo has already stockpiled memory to ride out the crunch and maintain steadier PC pricing. — Among other OEMs, HP, in its recent earnings call, flagged possible price increases or lower-spec models on the back of rising component costs. But Apple "may also be in a good position to weather the shortage," reports Ars Technica, since "analysts at Morgan Stanley and Bernstein Research believe that Apple has already laid claim to the RAM that it needs and that its healthy profit margins will allow it to absorb the increases better than most." Ars Technica also shows how much RAM and storage prices have jumped — sometimes as much as 2x or even 3x in just three months. "In short, there's no escaping these price increases, which affect SSDs and both DDR4 and DDR5 RAM kits of all capacities (though higher-capacity RAM kits do seem to be hit a little harder)." Memory and storage shortages can be particularly difficult to get through. As with all chips, it can take years to ramp up capacity and/or build new manufacturing facilities... And memory makers in particular may be slow to ramp up manufacturing capacity in response to shortages. If they decide to start manufacturing more chips now, what happens if memory demand drops off a cliff in six months or a year (if, say, an AI bubble deflates or pops altogether)? It means an oversupply of memory chips — consumers benefit from rock-bottom prices for components, but it becomes harder for manufacturers to cover their costs... The upshot is: Not only are memory prices getting bad now, but it's exceptionally difficult to predict when shortage-fueled price hikes might end... Tom's Hardware reports that AMD has told its partners that it expects to raise GPU prices by about 10 percent starting next year and that Nvidia may have canceled a planned RTX 50-series Super launch entirely because of shortages and price increases.

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Hyperloop One ceased operations in December 2023, notes CNN. "Yet nearly two years on, in other parts of the world, hyperloop projects are ongoing." For example, Rotterdam-based Hardt Hyperloop has a cool web site — and the company's managing director tells CNN that hyperloops are the only "actionable, sustainable solution to replace short-haul air travel" over distances greater than 300 miles. "It's 90% more efficient than air travel, operational expenses and maintenance costs are much lower than conventional high-speed railways and, as an enclosed, autonomous system, it's not affected by external factors such as bad weather or strikes." Rail-friendly Europe appears to be the new hyperloop hub, with four companies dedicated to it... Europe's Hyperloop Development Program (HDP) is a public-private partnership backed by EU funding and the private sector. HDP's vision is to have the first set of commercially viable hyperloop lines open by 2035-40, followed by a route network by 2050. It estimates that a 15,000-mile network linking 130 of Europe's major cities could shift 66% of short-haul flight passengers to hyperloop by 2050, saving between 113 million and 242 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Core network hubs would be scattered across the continent from London to Berlin, Madrid to Belgrade, and Sofia to Athens, while loops would serve the Iberian Peninsula, the Baltic States and Scandinavia, the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe. The cost? A cool 981 billion euros, or $1.1 trillion, according to HDP estimates... [T]hose behind the EU-backed HDP project are hoping to have a full-scale test track of up to 3 miles operational by the end of 2029, followed by a 20-30 mile twin-tube "Living Lab" which would replicate all aspects of day-to-day operation and public service, slated to be up and running by 2034. Elsewhere, Hyperloop Italia is investing in a demonstration line between Venice and Padua costing up to €800 million ($929 million) which could be ready by 2029, while Germany, Spain, India and China are also investigating trial routes to establish the viability of the technology. And meanwhile China and Japan are also building "maglev" (magnetic levitation) train lines, the article points out — though it also includes this quote from rail expert and author Christian Wolmar. "Hyperloop is unworkable. The infrastructure it needs would be amazingly expensive to build and it can't deliver the capacity to compete with high-speed railways or airlines. "It doesn't integrate with existing transport modes, the infrastructure required to reach city centers would cause intolerable noise and disruption. And there are doubts over energy costs, capacity and passenger safety if something goes wrong at such high speeds.... "[T]he economics of it just don't work."

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An EDM song by the British group Haven ran into trouble in October after it shared clips of upcoming song "I Run" on TikTok. The song "was an overnight viral sensation online," writes Digital Music News — racking up millions of plays "even before it hit streaming services." (Although the Washington Post notes that "Record labels and TikTok users began questioning whether 'I Run' used an AI deepfake, modeled off British R&B singer Jorja Smith, for the vocals.") Digital Music News picks up the story: The artist says he used his own voice to record the vocals, and then ran it through layers of processing and filtering to turn it into the female-sounding voice heard in the track. However, that filtering also included the use of the controversial genAI platform Suno — and that's what complicates things... [The article says later that Suno "is currently in the middle of a blockbuster lawsuit with the Big Three major labels over allegations of widespread copyright infringement of sound recordings used during the AI model training process."] Meanwhile, the song was rapidly amassing listenership. It soared to #11 on the U.S. Spotify chart and #25 on Spotify globally. Videos using the song continued going viral on TikTok and Instagram, including one in which rapper Offset had apparently played the song during a Boiler Room set, which later turned out to be falsified. And then, as quickly as it appeared, "I Run" was taken down from streaming services, including Spotify and Apple Music. That was due, in part, to numerous takedown notices from The Orchard, the label to which Jorja Smith is signed, as well as the RIAA and IFPI. The takedown notices alleged various issues with the track, including the "misrepresentation" of another artist, as well as copyright infringement. As a result, the song has also been withheld from the Billboard charts, including the Hot 100, on which it had been predicted to debut this week before the controversy. Billboard points out that it "reserves the right to withhold or remove titles from appearing on the charts that are known to be involved in active legal disputes related to copyright infringement that may extend to the deletion of such content on digital service providers." The song itself has now been re-released with an all-human vocal track. But going forward will the music industry ever work with AI platforms? The Washington Post reports: "I Run" has taken off as record labels remain unsure of the extent to which they should welcome generative AI programs such as Suno or Udio into the industry. After the two AI music companies began growing in popularity, the three major labels — Sony Music, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group — filed lawsuits against Suno and Udio, claiming that the AI companies have used the labels' sound recordings to train their model. Since then, UMG and Warnerhave reached agreementsto work with Udio, ending their litigation... It comes shortly after all three major labels licensed their catalogue to Klay, a music streaming start-up that allows users to adjust songs using artificial intelligence. Major licensing organizations such as ASCAP and BMI shared that they would register songs that were partially AI-generated — but not fully generated ones. Haven appears to present an uncomfortable edge case. While some AI-generated songs that sound broadly like other artists have been allowed to remain on streaming platforms, the voice in "I Run" appears to have been deemed too duplicative for comfort.

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